


Shelter

by paperstorm



Series: Somewhere In Brooklyn [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brooklyn, Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Homophobic Language, M/M, POV Alternating, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-War, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 20:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: Bucky figures something that feels as right as this does can’t be all bad, and the people with things to say about it are the ones who must be wrong, not the two of them. He can’t be ashamed of what they have, even if the world would tell him he should. He loves the idiot in bed with him too much to care what they say. Bucky’s loved Steve every minute he’s been alive. If that isn’t right, then he isn’t right, all the way down to his core, and there’s nothing to be done about it anyway.





	Shelter

“My mother wouldn’t like it, is all.”  
   
“Well let’s just not tell her, then.”  
   
Steve looks up, as he walks past the opening to an alley.  
   
“I don’t know, Willie,” a girl about his age is saying. She’s pressed into the brick wall of the building, and a local tough Steve recognizes is crowding against her. There’s a predatory gleam in his eyes, and a sick smile on his face, and she looks panicked.  
   
“Lucky for you, _I_  know,” he jeers, leaning in closer and kissing her cheek.  
   
Steve’s blood boils. “Hey!” he calls out.  
   
Both sets of eyes turn to him.  
   
“Piss off, Rogers,” Willie says, attention turning back to the girl and moving in closer. He’s holding her against the wall with rough hands around her thin arms.  
   
Her green eyes are bright and silently begging Steve to help her.  
   
Steve steps in closer, trying to puff himself up to his full height. It’s measly compared to Willie’s but sometimes Steve gets away with acting more dangerous than he’s capable of being. Sometimes people are taken by surprise by him, because he doesn’t look like someone who could win a fight in an alley so his assertion that he could makes them assume he has hidden talents. Or maybe a gun. He doesn’t really have either, but he can’t walk away when he sees someone being treated badly. It isn’t in him to be unbothered by it.  
   
“I think the lady said no,” Steve tells Willie.  
   
“I didn’t hear her say that,” Willie sneers, grinning at the girl in a way that makes Steve’s stomach churn.  
   
“Well, I did. Maybe your skull is too thick for the message to get through.”  
   
That gets his attention. He looks back at Steve with an offended look on his stupid face. Steve smirks to himself, and thinks,  _good_. “I said fuck off. This ain’t your business.”  
   
“It’s my business if you’re forcing yourself on poor girls in a dirty back alley.” Steve walks closer and physically shoves Willie backwards. He stumbles a few steps, and then growls like he’s feral.  
   
“Are you alright?” Steve asks the girl.  
   
“What the fuck are you gonna do about it?” Willie asks, storming back over and shoving Steve, a lot harder than Steve had shoved him. Steve manages not to fall down, but barely.  
   
“Don’t, Willie, he didn’t mean anything by it,” the girl frets.  
   
Steve tries not to take it personally that she thinks she needs to protect  _him_. He only barely manages that, too. He doesn’t get a word in edgewise before Willie is winding up and throwing a punch at him. It hits Steve in the jaw. Pain blooms over his face and he steps back and doubles over, spitting blood onto the pavement. Before he can swing back Willie gets him again, and this time Steve does fall, heavily on his hip down into the dirt.  
   
“Help!” the girl hollers, at no one in particular. “Somebody help!”  
   
They’re joined almost immediately by two older men, maybe in their 40s, in nice suits and hats. Steve burns with the desire to fight back anyway, to rush at Willie and tackle him onto the ground, but he doesn’t.  
   
“That’s what I thought, you fucking fairy,” Willie fires at him, before deciding his chances against three of them aren’t great and stalking angrily away. Steve’s blood boils again. He goes for a moment nearly blind with rage, chest rising and falling in dramatic heaves. He wants to chase after Willie and punch him until his teeth break. He wants to put him in the hospital and then visit him just to spit in his face.  
   
“Everything alright, Miss?” one of the men asks the girl.  
   
She nods. “Yes, we’re fine now, thank you.”  
   
One of them pats Steve condescendingly on the shoulder and tells him, “put some ice on that shiner, kid,” before they leave as well. The girl swoops in on him and kisses his cheek.  
   
“My hero,” she gushes. It sounds half-way sarcastic to Steve.  
   
“Sure.” Steve smiles through the ache in his jaw. “Stay away from that guy, he’s bad news.”  
   
She promises she will, and kisses his cheek again, and then she’s gone, and Steve is alone in the alley with a bloody lip and a fire still burning in his chest, and the irrational desire to start a fight with the next person who looks at him just so he can punch  _something_. He punches the brick wall, instead, and because it’s a brick wall, he loses that fight, too. He swears and shakes his hand, knuckles bloody to join his lip at the party and a bruise likely forming on his face to join his battered ego. Steve swears again and turns, leaning back against the wall and sliding down it. He sits, with his knees up and his elbows resting on them, for a long time.  
   
*           *           *  
   
Bucky looks up at the sound of footsteps on the steps outside. The sun is almost down and Steve is a lot later than Bucky thought he would be. His shift at the corner store ended hours ago.  
   
Bucky is mending a pair of socks with a hole in the heel of the left one. He’s not as good at it as his Ma is, or as good as Steve is, but he’s been practicing since they moved in together and he’s getting better at it. His hands are getting steadier and the lines of stiches are getting straighter and more even and not leaving the fabric on either side puckered like they used to. They don’t have the funds for new clothing every time something gets a hole in it, so it’s a necessary skill. He puts the sock down on the coffee table in front of him as the door opens, looking up in surprise as it slams shut a moment later.  
   
Steve is seething, red-faced and messy-haired. There’s blood around his mouth and dirt on his clothes. He’s looking at Bucky like he’s  _daring_ Bucky to have something to say about it and see what happens if he does. Bucky wants to. Wants to yell and scream and knock some sense into Steve, gripe at him that he can’t go around fighting everyone who looks at him wrong because one of these days he’s going to pick a fight he won’t walk away from so easily. He’ll land himself in the hospital,  _again_ , and they don’t have the money for the bills. Or he’ll get himself permanently injured and then he won’t be able to work, and what the hell are they going to do  _then_. Bucky wants to say these things, but doesn’t, because he’s said them before. Steve’s heard them all, and never learns, so Bucky has no reason to believe he’d learn this time if Bucky repeated them all again.  
   
Steve huffs out a breath and goes to the bathroom. Bucky leans back, tipping his head back onto the cushion behind him and rubbing his hands over his face. The water runs, turning on and off a few times. Minutes later Steve’s back, with his face clean and a cloth wrapped around his right hand. He sits in the chair opposite Bucky with his arms crossed and a sour look on his face.  
   
“Am I allowed to ask?” Bucky says to the water-stained ceiling above him.  
   
“I didn’t have a choice.”  
   
“I didn’t say you did.”  
   
Steve is quiet, and Bucky chances a glance at him. He’s looking down at his hands, now, folded contritely in his lap.  
   
“As long as you’re not really hurt.”  
   
“Willie Murphy,” Steve says, without looking up.  
   
Bucky exhales heavily. “Yeah. He’s a piece’a work.”  
   
“He was in an alley with some dame. She was sayin’ no and he wasn’t listening.”  
   
“You did the right thing, then,” Bucky says, and he means it. He isn’t happy about  _how_ Steve handles these things, it would be better to get a policeman or at least to find someone else to back him up so he’s not charging into the lion’s den all alone, but he doesn’t always think things through all the way before he charges. Rarely. Almost never.  
   
“He called me a fairy.” Steve sniffs, a deep frown on his forehead but his cheeks flushed like he’s embarrassed. His fingers worry over his shirttails and he won’t look Bucky in the eye, choosing instead to thoroughly examine the floor between them.  
   
“I mean, you are one,” Bucky points out. He means it to cut the tension, to make Steve roll his eyes and laugh reluctantly and take that look off his face. It has the opposite effect.  
   
Steve glares at him, color rising further but in anger now. “Fuck you,” he spits at Bucky, fire in his tone, and marches past him toward the bedroom.  
   
Bucky closes his eyes and rubs his face. Behind him, another door slams.  
   
He gives Steve a few minutes. Cleans up from his lunch earlier, or at least half – rinsing the dishes in the sink and leaving them stacked neatly. He’ll wash them with soap later. Or tomorrow. Or, more likely, he’ll forget and Steve will do it and then Bucky will feel badly. His reflection in the window over the kitchen sink frowns back at him, silently hurling some well-deserved insults at him. Bucky pulls the blind down.  
   
“Can I come in?” he asks, outside the bedroom with a gentle knock to the door.  
   
“Whatever,” Steve’s voice returns, and Bucky bites his lip and opens it.  
   
Steve is on the bed, legs tucked under him and arms wrapped around his knobbly knees. He doesn’t look up as Bucky enters.  
   
“I’m sorry. That was mean.”  
   
“I  _know_ I’m queer, Buck, that’s the problem,” Steve tells his knees.  
   
Bucky sits on the edge of the bed.  
   
“That jerk was doin’ that kinda shit with a girl? Getting all physical with her? Just because she didn’t want to kiss him? He called me that ‘cause he wanted to hurt my feelings, make fun of me for bein’ skinny, but if he’d do that to a girl, imagine what someone like him would do to me if he knew he was right.”  
   
“I wouldn’t let him,” Bucky swears.  
   
“You got nothin’ do to with it.” Steve finally meets his eyes. “It ain’t about that. I could defend myself, I’d fight back and probably get away with just a few broken bones, but I shouldn’t have to. And neither should you.”  
   
“It’s how it is, Steve.” Bucky sighs. “It’s shit but I don’t know how to make it any different.”  
   
“If people ever found out … the shit that would happen.” Steve swears under his breath and drops his head back. It clunks loudly against the headboard. “We’d be kicked outta this place. Lose our jobs. People at the store wouldn’t serve us anymore. We’d end up homeless and starving if we were  _lucky_. If we were lucky enough to escape some lunatic coming after us with a switchblade.”  
   
“Is all this just now occurring to you?”  
   
“No, it …” Steve sighs. “No. I just got reminded, when he called me that. Reminded we can never have what everyone else has. I can never hold your hand in the street or tell people about you or marry you.”  
   
Bucky’s heart skips a beat. “You’d wanna marry me?”  
   
“What does it matter what I want? I couldn’t, even if I did.”  
   
His throat feels thick as he swallows. Bucky gets up and goes around to the other side of the bed so he can sit next to Steve. He shuffles in close, sliding down a bit so he can rest his head on Steve’s shoulder. Steve sighs again, deeply this time, but he lifts his arm up to wrap it around Bucky, and leans his head down, forehead against Bucky’s hair.  
   
“I’m sorry that happened,” Buck says softly. “He can kick off for all I care. Hopefully the next lug he tussles with finishes him off.”  
   
“I don’t want him to  _die_ , Buck.”  
   
Bucky shrugs. “Wouldn’t catch me weepy over it.”  
   
Steve leans further into him, knees falling sideways so he’s curled around Bucky’s torso. He’s always felt so perfect in Bucky’s arms. He knows Steve’s right, on everything he said. Bucky isn’t stupid, he knows they shouldn’t feel about each other the way they do. He’d struggled with it for years; he knows it just as well as Steve does. But Bucky figures something that feels as right as this does can’t be all bad, and the people with things to say about it are the ones who must be wrong, not the two of them. He can’t be ashamed of what they have, even if the world would tell him he should. He loves the idiot in bed with him too much to care what they say. Bucky’s loved Steve every minute he’s been alive. If that isn’t right, then he isn’t right, all the way down to his core, and there’s nothing to be done about it anyway.  
   
Bucky wraps an arm across his middle, reaching up to rub his thumb lightly over Steve’s split lip. “Need something for this?”  
   
Steve shakes his head. “Ain’t that bad.”  
   
“You’d lose a leg and tell me it ain’t that bad, lunkhead.” Bucky brushes his thumb again, affectionately, and then presses a kiss to Steve’s shoulder over his shirt.  
   
Steve doesn’t answer, but his head goes back to resting against Bucky’s.  
   
Bucky squeezes him, leaves his arm settled across Steve’s stomach. “I don’t need anyone to know. Everything I want, I got right here.”  
   
“Buck.”  
   
“I mean it,” Bucky says. “You’re right, I guess. Shit that we can’t go around yellin’ about it from rooftops like everyone else can. Shit that we’d definitely get our faces beat in if anyone ever found out. But I don’t … love you less just ‘cause we gotta keep it in here. I like it better in here, anyway. No one can touch it.”  
   
Steve repeats his name, and sounds unsteady this time. Bucky kisses his shoulder again. Steve slides down so his head is against the pillows next to Bucky’s. He kisses Bucky’s lips, gently so he doesn’t disturb his cut one and start it bleeding again. Bucky cups his cheek, pets gentle fingertips under his eye.  
   
“Got you all to myself, this way,” Bucky whispers. “Don’t want anything more than that.”

**Author's Note:**

> [come talk to me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


End file.
